Cottage by the sea
It came with a sheep to keep the lawns trim, writes Robyn Welsh
Chattels or no chattels — the choice was clear for Kath and Gerry McKendrick when tossing up between two Algies Bay holiday homes for sale 31 years ago.
They decided against the fully furnished three-bedroom home with sleep-out and went with a half-built cottage with a utility shed and garage.
“That house had a lot going for it,” says Kath of the big house. But when she and Gerry arrived from their Rothesay Bay home to check out the cottage, they realised that it and its resident sheep called Lamb Chop had a lot more going for it.
It took only two quick calls from the local public phone box to the Whangarei phone number on the “private sale” sign to seal the deal.
The vendor directed them to the house key on condition the lamb didn’t venture up the front steps and risk injury.
“We wondered why there was a tyre at the bottom of the steps,” says Kath. “He just followed us everywhere.
“He sat down with us when we ate lunch outside, and that was when we discovered he loved ginger nut biscuits.”
The decision made, Gerry and Kath phoned the vendor back. He agreed to let Lamb Chop stay on condition they didn’t kill him.
“Why would we kill him?” said Kath. The vendor feared some people might see Lamp Chop, then about 18 months old, as a Sunday roast.
Not us, said Kath and Gerry. Instead, they gave Lamb Chop a new name. “We called him Patrick Mower, or just Patrick,” says Kath, after the British actor of fame.
Under the protective eyes of locals, Patrick continued to keep the lawns down. He acquired celebrity status before he died of old age, 15 years ago.
More than once, Kath has heard passers-by telling their children/grandchildren that this is where a lamb used to live.
“He was a real identity and I became known as the lady with the lamb,” she says of the woolly companion now immortalised in the “Patrick’s Patch” plaque on their deck.
Emotional ties aside, Gerry and Kath enjoyed lifting their cottage from its most basic form into that of a comfy, airy retreat.
A carpenter by trade, Gerry did the building work and he and Kath completed the finishing.
They slept on the bedroom floor and woke to wide, elevated, protected sea views looking out through the lounge. They altered little of the original layout, beyond extending the front deck with steps down to the garden.
“It has been fabulous. Even if we’d been out for dinner on a Friday night and arrived home late, we’d drive up,” says Kath.
“Waking up here in the morning made it so worthwhile.
“I used to say ‘It’s one hour away, but it’s another world away’.
“And that’s how I still feel about it because there’s a wonderful sense of community here.”
Gerry and Kath came to NZ in 1975, intending to stay only briefly. “Two years became five became 40 and now 43,” says Kath.
Now retired in Milford, they’ve decided to sell and see the countries they intended to visit before Algies Bay came calling.